


you're like winter

by mysecretfriends



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 14:54:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysecretfriends/pseuds/mysecretfriends
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She warns you that love is a silly thing. You gave a small smile and murmur that you already know.<br/>[No real ships! Implied past Sollux/Aradia]</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're like winter

**Author's Note:**

> [Word count: 1,344]

     You find her late at night after returning Nepeta safely back to her house. She’s stumbling and you can smell the stink of alcohol on her like its a perfume and you can’t help but wonder how much she’s had to drink this time. How many more nights she’ll spend like this. Sometimes, when she’s inebriated enough that she feels like talking to you, let alone looking at you, she whispers about Sollux. Her home life. Her sister. But mostly Sollux.  
  
     And you listen. It’s all you can do. You never know what to say, you’ve never been close with her despite that silly little crush that sends your heart into overdrive when you see her and leaves you dreaming of her at night. Wondering of what could be. Of what will never be. You allow yourself to indulge in these tortures; that sadistic side of you just loves it.  
  
     You whisper her name and reach out a large hand to steady her as she turns, bleary brown eyes lighting on your face, unfocused. She doesn’t shove off the hand like she once used to and you mark that down as an improvement, one that gives you that foolish disease called hope. She’s already expressed her complete and utter lack of disinterest, of hatred and annoyance toward you. And, yet, at the dead of night when no ones looking and when the alcohol transforms her into someone new, like a butterfly crawling out from the hardened cocoon that shields itself from the world, she’ll let you come to her. She’ll let you sit beside her. Let you listen to her or just siare up at the sky in silence. Sometimes she doesn’t want to talk. Other times she whispers her stories that become etched into brain, like stories written down hastily on scraps of paper, things you never forget.  
  
     This is the closest you will get to her, this small girl who used to be full so of life and laughter and adventure. This will be the closest you will get to see her peeking through the hardened mask she usually dons around you, a ghost of a smile on her lips, before she burrows back into that cocoon, away from the world, away from you.  
  
     She asks what you’re doing.  
  
     You say you were taking Nepeta back home and she gives a snort, but says nothing more. She’s perched on the tips of her toes like she might take off at any moment and leave you on your own, but she doesn’t.  
  
     She never does when she's like this and, for an instant, you wonder if she sticks around simply for the attention you shower upon her. But, then you dismiss it; if that were the case, she wouldn't be so callous toward you sober or not.  
  
     And, then, she begins to walk, taking slow, deliberate steps, knowing you'll follow. You're tempted to reach out and steady her the few times she stumbles, but you bite your lip and resist. She hates it when you touch her. So, you always place a few steps of distance between her and yourself, never entering that bubble she keeps around herself.  
  
     In the end, you find yourself following her to a small park near by, hiding yourselves among the copse of bushes and trees. She’s sprawled out, half-lidded eyes fixed on the sky above, the rich expanse of blues and purples dotted with the stars that she so adored.  
  
     The stars were the only witnesses of your escapades with the girl you love. And that’s just how she would have it.  
  
     You ask quietly if she got home okay the other night when you found her in the same condition, genuine concern coloring your tone, uncaring if she would sneer at you or not. But she doesn’t. Instead she sighs and watches the jellyfish blob of smoke exhale and hang in front of her in the chilled air.  
  
     She says fall nights are her favorite.  
  
     You ask why.  
  
     “Because the trees change,  
They’re beautiful and bright,  
And then they begin to lose that beauty…” she idly toys with a leaf of the maple tree they rested beneath before crunching it in her palm, leaving a crisp scent of decay in the air.  
  
     “Everything’s changing,  
Growing more beautiful for the world,  
But then they die once winter comes…” she brushes the dust and debris from the crumpled leaf off her hands.  
  
     She twists her lips like she wants to say more, but she doesn’t.  
  
     You murmur about how you’ve never really thought of the seasons, never really even had a favorite one.  
  
     When she speaks, it’s slow and slurred and sweet, “You like winter. Winter is the time were everything is frozen and nothing is moving. Everyone is waiting for spring. For something better. But that’s stupid.” she knocks a few leaves away from her and you sit, silent, as you absorb her words.  
  
     She says spring is the season for romance then gives a derisive laugh that makes you frown. She says that’s why you’re a winter type. You’re forever waiting for a new spring love.  
  
     Neither of you have to say that it won’t happen and it doesn’t have to be said. The unspoken words seem to be hanging between you, loud and cruel and unflinching.  
  
     She warns you that love is a silly thing.  
  
     You give a small smile and murmur that you already know.  
  
     And she just stares at you, brow furrowed with her frustration and maybe a twinge of guilt.  
  
     She spits at you that she wishes you’d leave her alone. But her voice is wavering and you knew it wasn’t a demand to get away from her.  
  
     Still, you wish you could leave her alone, too, but somehow she keeps coming back into your life just as you promised yourself you would be done with her. Just as you were getting over her. And you know she doesn’t do it on purpose. And you never mind.  
  
     The next time she speaks, her eyes are brimming with tears and you feel your heart sink and your stomach twist with something like guilt. You shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be seeing her so vulnerable. It will only add more fuel to her hatred toward you later on, but you don’t leave. You never do.  
  
     She whispers of how she doesn’t understand why you like her so much. Of how she doesn’t understand what you see in her.  
  
     Her voice is soft, cracked and her eyes are pained with the phantoms of the past that would always plague her.  
  
     Surprisingly, you don’t feel nervous and scared. Surprisingly, you feel calm as you soothingly tell her what she needs to hear, though your words are clumsy and untamed. You tell her about that little girl he met in third grade who took him on adventures. Of that bright and boisterous girl who smiled easy, laughed easier. Who’s grin was so wide and bright that anyone would be lucky to have it flashed it their way. And, oh, the poems you could sigh to her, the pictures you could paint of her. And you do. You do because you know this is what she needs.  
  
     She watches you, tears silently streaming down her cheeks and she didn’t even have to say what she was thinking for you to address the topic. You delicately wipe away a few of the tears as you murmur how Sollux will surely see his mistake, of how he and her family were blind to the beautiful, brilliant girl they had. That they were silly and people were always going to be silly and sometimes it just took them time to realize what they had in front of them all along.  
  
     She leaves you with a kiss planted on his forehead that still tingles, but you know she won’t remember any of this tomorrow in school. In school, you will pass through the halls as strangers, you the kid she hates, the silly little lovelorn fool and she the empress of your mind.


End file.
